Third-Party Products and Binary-Compatible Families

Third-Party Products

Licensees of the Open Brand are not obliged to directly sell the
products that they certify. They are required to ensure that the
Certified Products are available in the marketplace. Licensees can
therefore certify products that they market by reference to or by
incorporation of third-party products.

This process does not in any way diminish the obligations imposed upon
the licensee by the Trademark License Agreement; the obligations are
the same as if the complete Certified Product were sold directly by
the licensee. The licensee is therefore advised to have appropriate
agreements with each third-party supplier.

Binary-Compatible Family

The Open Brand applies to software products that conform to the Product
Standard in a defined hardware, or combined hardware-system software
environment (that is, the underlying hardware and any system software
necessary to allow the product to function). The relationships are
shown in
Relationships in a Defined Hardware-Software Environment.

Figure: Relationships in a Defined Hardware-Software Environment

The supporting environment may be available in a variety of different
realizations.

Where a series of environments are binary-compatible, the product may
be certified in all of the series on the basis of a single test report
and one Product Certification application. Additional members of a
binary-compatible series may be added subsequently.

Identification of the binary-compatible family must be made in the
Conformance Statement.

No strict rules are given by The Open Group as to what constitutes
binary-compatibility, as it is architecture-specific, but note that the
audit program may request the conformance of a Certified Product to be
demonstrated on any appropriately configured member of a claimed
binary-compatible family.